It’s good to begin the New Year with enthusiasm. Here at Multnomah County Library we’re excited about several things. First, and perhaps most importantly, we’re looking forward to being successful at the ballot box in May, when primary voters will be asked to renew the bulk of our funding. Fortunately, the library is well-regarded in the Portland, OR, community, and we’re likely to secure the support we need.

We’re also excited about rolling out the new “Every Child Ready to Read @your library” (ECRR) program. As you probably know, ECRR was pioneered more than a decade ago by the Association for Library Service to Children and the Public Library Association. The original curriculum focused on teaching parents and caregivers about the six early literacy skills that provide the foundation for learning to read—print awareness, vocabulary, print motivation, phonological awareness, narrative skills, and letter knowledge. Yes, it did take the library world a few months—OK, maybe a couple years—to internalize these skills and share them with parents, but before long, the terms just rolled off our tongues.

Still, many parents found phrases like “phonological awareness” and “narrative skills” off-putting or overwhelming. Sensing this, some librarians avoided mentioning these early literacy skills altogether and, instead, concentrated on the best practices to foster them. When the University of Michigan’s Susan B. Newman and LaSalle University’s Donna Celano evaluated ECRR in 2010, they found that librarians wanted simplified terminology, the latest reading research findings, and workshops that included children as well as adults. Fortunately, that’s exactly what their revised program—and the accompanying tool kit, Every Child Ready to Read @your Library, 2nd edition—provides. Like the original curriculum, the new one encourages librarians to coach parents and caregivers to be their children’s first and best teachers. But instead of focusing on the six early literacy skills, the updated program highlights five research-based practices—talking, singing, reading, writing, and playing—activities that develop prereading skills in children from birth to age five. Of course, these are exactly the activities we’ve all been promoting for the past decade, so we’re delighted.

If your library hesitated to offer ECRR’s parent workshops because of the additional cost of training, the daunting jargon, or because children were excluded from them, then ECRR’s latest incarnation is for you. The new, improved ECRR allows a librarian to present the program without going through the training that was previously required. Plus, all of its workshops are more interactive and, you’ll be glad to know, include talking points instead of scripts. (Check out the new program at www.everychildreadytoread.org.)

Finally, we’re thrilled about piloting the new “Seven Essential Life Skills” training modules from Mind in the Making (http://mindinthemaking.org), a learning campaign led by Ellen Galinsky of the Families and Work Institute. Thanks to a grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Multnomah was chosen as one of three communities nationwide to offer this curriculum to parents, early childhood practitioners, and elementary school administrators and staff. In November, Galinsky visited Portland to present the seven essential skills modules: focus and self-control, perspective taking, communicating, making connections, critical thinking, taking on challenges, and self-directed engaged learning. Like the new ECRR program, Mind in the Making emphasizes the role of an adult in a child’s life. It’s so fundamental. Children build their knowledge and skills from their interactions with the significant people in their lives and from new experiences.

Best of all, children who live with adults who talk, sing, rhyme, write, play and, especially, read to them daily, learn these seven essential life skills as well as the six early literacy skills. And that gives us a lot to look forward to in the new year.

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